Undernews For January 8, 2009

THE PROGRESSIVE REVIEW
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Editor: Sam Smith

8 January 2009
WORD

Standardized testing is the worst thing that could have happened. You're producing scientists that think every experiment has perfect answers. - Reid Walker, Colorado biology teacher

FLOTSAM & JETSAM

THE CENTER: AMERICAN'S GREATEST POLITICAL THREAT

Sam Smith

As a navigator on a Coast Guard cutter, there were a couple of things I took for granted:

- You couldn't chart a course without knowing your destination.

- If you took a navigational fix and it put you on one side of a rock and then you took another fix and it put you on the other side of the rock, don't split the difference.

In Washington, however, it would be hard to find two rules more frequently broken as politicians and the media pursue the false god of moderation, centrism and post-partisanship.

Barack Obama's team of revivals is almost a parody of this search, based on the childish illusion that truth's safe passage lies halfway between the alternatives. The result, absolutely predictable, is a stunning lack of imagination, courage or simple willingness to try something different. And sometimes you run aground.

As Jerome Grossman put it in Populist America recently: "If the Democratic and Republican parties were to place top value on agreement, that would be a recipe for maintaining the status quo, for the easiest course would be to accept current conditions."

Although centrism is supposed to produce the best possible results this is seldom the case. Decades of post partisanship on health care, for example, has produced a system that nobody wants, yet now still another president proposes to tinker with the program and, if successful, will have postponed the logical solution, single payer healthcare, for another decade or two.

The fiscal bailout was a disastrous example of charting a course without a destination, An unknown amount of money was granted to unknown entities for unknown purposes with unknown oversight largely because so few on Capitol Hill had the slightest idea what else to do.

To be sure, compromise is frequently necessary, but if you don't have a final destination in mind then one has no way of judging the best compromise to make. For example, in healthcare, lowering the age of Medicare to 60 would not endanger the future of single payer the way that Obama's approach probably will.

But politicians in Washington seldom have a destination beyond the next election and hence their compromises have little to do with the actual issue at hand and far more with such matters as sources of campaign contributions. Which is why in the current financial crisis so much aid has been given to those who give politicians money - i.e. financial institutions - and so little to those who merely give them their vote.

Obama didn't invent the centrist scam even if he has engaged in it to the fullest. For example, the Clintonistas claimed the ability to arise above the petty disputes of normal life -- to become "post-ideological." For example, Clinton, upon nominating Judge Ginsberg to the Supreme Court called her neither liberal nor conservative, adding that she "has proved herself too thoughtful for such labels." In one parenthetical aside, Clinton dismissed three hundred years of political philosophical debate.

Similarly, when Clinton made the very political decision to name conservative David Gergen to his staff, he announced that the appointment signaled that "we are rising above politics."

"We are," he insisted, "going beyond partisanship that damaged this country so badly in the last several years to search for new ideas, a new common ground, a new national unity." And when Clinton's new chief of staff was announced, he was said to be "apolitical," a description used in praise.

Politics without politics. The appointee was someone who, in the words of the Washington Post, "is seen by most as a man without a personal or political agenda that would interfere with a successful management of the White House."

By the time Clinton had been in office a few months he appeared ready to dispense with opinion and thought entirely. "It is time we put aside the divisions of party and philosophy and put our best efforts to work on a crime plan that will help all the American people," he declared in front of a phalanx of uniformed police officers.

And Clinton, of course, was not alone. The Third Millennium, a slick Perotist organization of considerable ideological intent, called itself "post-partisan." Perot himself played a similar game: the man without a personal agenda.

The media also likes to pretend that it is above political ideology or cultural prejudice. Journalists like Leonard Downie Jr. and Elizabeth Drew don't even vote and Downie, former executive managing editor of the Washington Post, once instructed his staff to "cleanse their professional minds of human emotions and opinions."

Of course, in the postmodern society that Clinton and Obama have proposed -- one that rises above the false teachings of ideology -- we find ourselves with little to steer us save the opinions of whatever non-ideologue happens to be in power. In this case, we may really only have progressed from the ideology of the many to the ideology of the one or, some might say, from democracy to authoritarianism.

Among equals, indifference to shared meaning might produce nothing worse than lengthy argument. But when the postmodernist is President of the United States, the impulse becomes a 500-pound gorilla to be fed, as they say, anything it wants.

But there's an even great danger involved in the cult of centrism. With few exceptions, the major threats to American democracy have repeatedly come from neither right nor left but from the center.

From that internecine struggle of two factions of the American middle known as the Civil War to FBI assaults on activist organizations in the 60s and 70s, from the Palmer raids to anti-terrorism legislation of the Clinton and Bush administration, Americans have traditionally had more to fear from people they have elected than from those on the fringes of politics. In fact, the latter have often served largely as an excuse for the American center to tighten its grip on the political and economic system. This is not to say that the left and the right would not enjoy being just as violent and repressive given the chance, but the American center has rarely allowed that.

Even the KKK, so often cited as an example of the sort of threat the contemporary right poses, was powerful primarily because it was at the center, holding political and judicial and law enforcement office as well as hiding beneath its robes. In some towns, lynching parties were even announced in the local paper. And in the 1920s, both the Colorado governor and mayor of Denver were members of the Klan, the latter well enough regarded to have had Stapleton airport named after him.

Take one of our war stars as an example. A New Yorker review of the life of General Curtis LeMay, written by Richard Rhodes, noted that LeMay ran the air war against both Japan and North Korea, became head of the sacrosanct Strategic Air Command and was one of the military heroes of his time. Here are just a few of his accomplishments:

- The destruction of nearly 17 square miles of Tokyo with the loss of at least 100,000 civilian lives. The US Strategic Bombing Survey estimated that "probably more persons lost their lives by fire at Tokyo in a 6-hour period than at any time in the history of man."

- The destruction of 62 other Japanese cities. Only Hiroshima and Nagasaki were spared -- reserved for a different sort of horror. In sum, more than a million Japanese civilians were killed. LeMay himself would admit years later, "I suppose if I had lost the war, I would have been tried as a war criminal. Fortunately, we were on the winning side."

- The bombing of North Korean cities, dams, villages and rice paddies. Civilian deaths: more than two million.

- In short, with the enthusiastic blessing of the American center, LeMay was directly responsible for the slaughter of about half as many civilians as died in the Holocaust. To this day, establishment Washington won't even face what happened at Nagasaki or Hiroshima, let alone even larger massacres occurring under the command of LeMay.

And LeMay had grander schemes. His plan for defeating the Soviet Union included the obliteration of 70 Soviet cities in thirty days with thirty-three atomic bombs and the deaths of 2.7 million citizens.

More recently, the Vietnam and Iraq wars, the most disastrous conflicts in American history, were the products of an American center including politicians, academics and the media. According to one study, while tens of thousands of American troops were dying in Vietnam, between 1963 and 1968 only 220 deaths occurred in the U.S. as the result of fringe violence on the left and right.

The collapse of the American economy, the unprecedented assault on constitutional rights, the disastrous war on drugs, and the appalling abuse of the environment all came from the center.

Worried about hate groups? Name those that have posed anywhere near the threat to American minorities as the Bush administration.

One of the greatest myths of America's elite is that it functions by logic and reason and that it is devoid of myth. In truth, elites function like other people; they choose their gods and worship them. The gods, to be sure, are different. For example, many in Washington believe fervently in the sanctity of data, the Ivy League, the New York Times op pages and the Calvinist notion that their power is a outer, visible sign of an inner, invisible grace.

They pose as wise and intelligent, yet their course is frequently a disaster and profoundly anti-intellectual for it denies inquiry, skepticism, new information and imagination.

If you ask important people in politics, think tanks or the media where they stand politically, many will say "in the center." A lot of these folks like the center because it makes them sound reasonable and moderate. It also allows them to call other people extremists or gadflies or wishful thinkers for disagreeing with the conventional wisdom of the moment. Some members of the American elite have made whole careers of being measured and cautious. They like to write somber columns asking pompous questions like "Can the Center Hold?" What they really mean is: can they hold on to their power?

They are the most dishonest of the lot in American politics. A true conservative or libertarian is far more fun and useful to argue with, because they still believe in the need for argument as well as self-serving spin.

The centrists control our politics, our media and our campuses. They have directed the collapse of both the American empire and America democracy and yet are so self absorbed in their manic and destructive moderation that they don't even notice.

Not only is the center the major cause of our problems, our solutions have overwhelmingly come from the left, whether it be emancipation, women's rights, environmental consciousness, the labor movement or encouraging peace and sanity rather than war, the moderates' favorite immoderate tool.

As Susan B. Anthony put it so well:

"Cautious, careful people, always casting about to preserve their reputation and social standing, never can bring about reform. Those who are really in earnest must be willing to be anything or nothing in the world's estimation, and publicly and privately, in season and out, avow their sympathy with despised and persecuted ideas and their advocates, and bear the consequences."

PAGE ONE MUST

LOOK WHO'S COMING TO DINNER AT THE BLAIR HOUSE

Think Progress - In December, President-elect Obama asked the White House if he and his family could move into Blair House - the White House's guest house - a week early, so that his daughters Malia and Sasha could start school. The White House rebuffed them, saying the house was already booked for another guest. A White House source added that "Blair House was appalled" by the request.

After weeks of speculation, the mystery guest that trumped the President-elect and his family has finally been revealed. The White House offered the house to John Howard, the former Prime Minister of Australia who is set to receive a Medal of Freedom. Instead of arranging other accommodations for Howard's one-night stay, the Bush administration told the Obama family to stay in a hotel for two weeks. (Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Colombian President Álvaro Uribe, who are also receiving the Medal of Freedom, opted to find other accommodations.)

On MSNBC's "Countdown," Bloomberg journalist Margaret Carlson revealed that when the White House turned down Obama's request in early December, it had not yet even invited Howard to stay at the Blair House:

She also pointed out that Blair House has "119 rooms with 35 bathrooms. Howard wouldn't even have to share a sink with the Obamas."

Howard, a darling of the right wing, was one of Bush's biggest cheerleaders whom Bush has called his "mate of steel" for standing with him on Iraq and being the only leader of an industrialized nation - besides Bush, of course - to refuse to sign the Kyoto Protocol.

FIELD MANUAL FOR TORTURE

Alternet - In early September 2006, the U.S. Department of Defense, reeling from at least a dozen investigations into detainee abuse by interrogators, released Directive 2310.01E. This directive was advertised as an overhaul and improvement on earlier detainee operations and included a newly rewritten Army Field Manual for Human Intelligence Collector Operations. This guidebook for interrogators was meant to set a humane standard for U.S. interrogators worldwide, a standard that was respectful of the Geneva Conventions and other U.S. and international laws concerning treatment of prisoners.

While George W. Bush was signing a presidential directive allowing the CIA to conduct other, secret "enhanced interrogation techniques," which may or may not have included waterboarding, the new AFM was sold to the public as a return to civilized norms, in regards to interrogation.

Before long, opponents of U.S. torture policy were championing the new AFM as an appropriate "single-standard" model of detainee treatment. Support for implementing the revised AFM, as a replacement for the hated "enhanced" techniques earlier championed by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and the CIA, began to appear in legislation out of Congress, in the literature of human-rights organizations and in newspaper editorials. Some rights groups have felt the new AFM offered some improvements by banning repellent interrogation tactics, such as waterboarding, use of nudity, military dogs and stress positions. It was believed the AFM cemented the concept of command responsibility for infractions of the law.

There was only one problem: the AFM did not eliminate torture. Despite what it said, it did not adhere to the Geneva Conventions. Even worse, it took the standard operating procedure of Camp Delta at Guantanamo Bay and threatened to expand it all over the world.

The President of the National Lawyers Guild Marjorie Cohn has stated that portions of the AFM protocol, especially the use of isolation and prolonged sleep deprivation, constitutes cruel-and-unusual punishment and is illegal under the Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, the U.N. Convention Against Torture and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Hina Shamsi, an attorney with the ACLU's National Security Project, has stated that portions of the AFM are "deeply problematic" and "would likely violate the War Crimes Act and Geneva," and at the very least "leave the door open for legal liability." Physicians for Human Rights and the Constitution Project have publicly called for the removal of problematic and abusive techniques from the AFM.

Yet, the interrogation manual is still praised by politicians, including then-presidential candidate Barack Obama, who in December 2007 said he would "have the Army Field Manual govern interrogation techniques for all United States Government personnel and contractors."

RELIGION NOT ETHNICITY EXPLAINS PROP 8 VOTE

Natonal Gay & Lesbian Taskforce - An analysis of the Proposition 8 vote shows that party affiliation, political ideology, frequency of attending worship services and age were the driving forces behind the measure's passage on Nov. 4. The study finds that after taking into account the effect of religious service attendance, support for Proposition 8 among African Americans and Latinos was not significantly different than other groups. Through a precinct-by- precinct analysis and review of multiple other sources of data, the study also puts African-American support for Proposition 8 at no more than 59 percent, nowhere close to the 70 percent reported the night of the election.

The study found that four factors - party identification, ideology, frequency of religious service attendance and age - drove the 'yes' vote for Proposition 8. For example, more than 70 percent of voters who were Republican, identified themselves as conservative, or who attended religious services at least weekly supported Proposition 8. Conversely, 70 percent or more of voters who were Democrat, identified themselves as liberal, or who rarely attended religious services opposed the measure. More than two-thirds (67 percent) of voters 65 or older supported Proposition 8, while majorities under 65 opposed it. . .

People of all races and ethnicities who worship at least once a week overwhelmingly supported Proposition 8, with support among white, Asian and Latino frequent churchgoers actually being greater than among African Americans. . . 57 percent of African Americans attend religious services at least once a week, compared to 42 percent of whites and 40 percent of Asian Americans.

OBAMA EXPANDS END RUN AROUND CONFIRMATION PROCESS

Although it is rarely mentioned in the media, the growing number of top level White House positions - including ones that effectively outrank similar cabinet posts - has had the effect of not only reducing the role of cabinet positions but of the power of the Senate to affect them by the confirmation process. This is one of the many ways the Constitution has been covertly rewritten and so quietly that hardly anyone notices. This story describes Obama's contribution to the neutering of cabinet posts.

Michael D. Shear and Ceci Connolly, Washington Post - President-elect Barack Obama is assembling a new and influential cadre of counselors just steps from the Oval Office whose power to direct domestic policy will rival, if not exceed, the authority of his Cabinet.

Presidents have long strived to centralize influence in the White House, often to the frustration of their Cabinet secretaries. But not since Richard M. Nixon tried to abolish the majority of his Cabinet has a president gone so far in attempting to build a West Wing-based clutch of advisers with a mandate to cut through -- or leapfrog -- the traditional bureaucracy.

Obama's emerging "super-Cabinet" is intended to ensure that his domestic priorities -- health reform, the environment and urban affairs -- don't get mired in agency red tape or brushed aside by the ongoing economic meltdown and international crises. Half a dozen new White House positions have been filled by well-known leaders with experience navigating Washington turf wars.

But some see the potential for chaos within the administration.

"We're going to have so many czars," said Thomas J. Donohue, president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. "It's going to be a lot of fun, seeing the czars and the regulators and the czars and the Cabinet secretaries debate.". . .

In interviews, several top Obama advisers said they are extending to domestic affairs a model of governance that has long been used in foreign policy, in which the national security adviser manages diplomatic and military matters from a perch in the White House that offers him or her ready access to the president.

"Given the enormity of the challenges we face, it is critical to have someone in the White House every day, reporting to the president, coordinating policy and giving these issues the important focus they deserve," said Obama spokeswoman Stephanie Cutter. "It allows for efficient, streamlined decision-making."

But Bruce Herschensohn, a professor of foreign policy at Pepperdine University who was deputy special assistant to Nixon, said Obama's plans for the White House could do the opposite.

"It's adding a layer of bureaucracy rather than really eliminating one," said Herschensohn, recalling Nixon's failed attempt to eliminate all but four Cabinet agencies. "Everyone will be fighting with everybody. You'll have conflict with every Cabinet officer who will now have a superior in the West Wing or" the adjacent Eisenhower Executive Office Building.

If executed poorly, empowering a small team inside the White House can lead to insular decision making and the alienation of those Cabinet secretaries outside the loop, said historian I.M. Destler, a professor at the University of Maryland's public policy school.

"It tends to lead to disruption, and sometimes chaos, in terms of how the larger government works," Destler said. "It cuts out other people. They think the worst about what's going on in the White House. Loyalty to the president is diminished."

GRIDLOCK WE CAN COUNT ON

Dorothy Brizill, DC Watch - The Secret Service released its plans for street closings in DC on inauguration day, January 20, and they're wildly disproportionate to any past inaugural closing plans. They're not just meant to clear the area around the Capitol ceremony and the Pennsylvania Avenue parade, as they always have been in the past. Instead, they're designed to paralyze the city as a whole and to overburden Metro so much that it will be unusable on that day. Not only will three and a half square miles of downtown DC be closed to car traffic, but, in addition, all bridges and major roads linking the District to northern Virginia will be closed to vehicular traffic. These plans will inconvenience DC residents and workers, and they'll make it difficult for all the visitors to DC to get to the inaugural events they came to see.
As these plans have been made by the Secret Service and the Obama Presidential Inauguration Committee over the past few weeks, it has become increasingly clear that neither group cares in the least about accommodating DC residents, commuters, and visitors. It has also become clear that neither Mayor Fenty nor any DC government representative has played an independent role as a spokesman for our interests, and that nobody representing the city has tried to introduce common sense into the overblown, grandiose "security" schemes that will shut down our city unnecessarily.

Washington Times - The Secret Service announced unprecedented security measures for the presidential inauguration, saying it will shut down all bridge crossings from Virginia into the District and establish a security perimeter that closes or limits vehicular access on 100 city streets.AAA Mid-Atlantic spokesman John B. Townsend II predicted the bridge closings will overburden entry points to the city through Maryland and create gridlock throughout the metropolitan area.

"It's overkill," he said. "It totally cuts off access from Virginia. This is the most ridiculous thing I've heard of in my life. It just doesn't make sense.". .

DIAGNOSIS ON GUPTA NOT GOOD

Brian Clark, Daily Green - Gupta is a skilled surgeon who even distinguished himself saving lives in Iraq, while embedded with a Navy unit. But not everyone is bully on the choice. A number of people, including prominent New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, are uncomfortable with the fact that Gupta harshly criticized Michael Moore for his muckraking Sicko, when most observers believe Moore's work holds up better than the "fudging" Gupta accused him of.

For his part, pundit Keith Olbermann had this quip about the possible nomination: "Isn't this like making Judge Judy the Attorney General?" Olbermann argued that Gupta is "transparently TV," and wonders if the media connection is an evolution of the Surgeon General's role. Others have wondered if Gupta has enough public health experience.

Gupta once told Wolf Blizter, "We spend so much of our health care budget towards taking care of people after they've already become sick, instead of preventing some of those diseases in the first place. Medically and morally, it makes a lot of sense to keep people from getting sick in the first place, and I think that has got to be a big component of fixing the health care system overall."

That's a very commendable position, and one we at TDG absolutely support. However, we question whether Dr. Gupta's record -- while including many examples of commendable journalism -- really lives up to such ideals on balance. Now, we take a look back at Gupta's most disturbing positions:

- Chris Mooney blasted Gupta in Columbia Journalism Review for giving wide-eyed coverage of the Raelian cult's highly dubious claims of having cloned a human being back in 2002. Mooney faults Gupta for saying the Raelian-connected Clonaid group had "the capacity to clone," and, "We are certainly going to be anxiously awaiting to see some of the proof from these independent scientists next week." Despite the fact that Clonaid was providing no evidence of the purported "Eve" whatsoever, not even a photo.

- Despite the widespread evidence of harm from phthalates, Gupta soft pedals and downplays the risks:

"As we've been talking about, it's really hard to quantify just how much of a risk these phthalates are. Most of the studies have been done on animals. There's not human trials that actually show that they might be harmful, but a lot of people worried about it nonetheless."

Actually, a number of human studies have shown harm. For example, a recent study conducted by the University of Rochester Medical Center and published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives found that exposure to phthalates not only causes reproductive problems in men (as suggested by a previous study) but is also linked to abdominal obesity and insulin resistance in adult males.

Later, Gupta does concede: "So, you know, the likelihood of them being in combination possibly causing some detrimental effect is something that hasn't been studied as well."

- In a strange article for Time, Gupta criticized support of marijuana decriminalization for small possession, saying supporters of the law are just interested in getting stoned, not providing valuable medicine to those in pain. Gupta admits that marijuana can have benefits for some patients, but then he seems to fall on the favor of draconian control laws, instead of the rights of patients and doctors to best decide their own health care.

This is what he wrote: "But I'm here to tell you, as a doctor, that despite all the talk about the medical benefits of marijuana, smoking the stuff is not going to do your health any good." But what about those in pain and with glaucoma, whom he just wrote could be helped?

- Counterpunch argues that Gupta oversold Merck's Gardasil vaccine for young girls, starting back in 2006, before the FDA had approved the drug, but after the manufacturer had started a PR and marketing blitz, including targeting of journos. According to Counterpunch, the clinical trials of Gardasil never tested for preventing cervical cancer, despite the fact that Gupta hyped the product for that use. The site argues that Gupta failed to mention that medical experts warn that the jury is still out on what impact this vaccine might actually have on cervical cancer rates. (Gupta also did not disclose that Gardasil was not tested on young girls before being approved, who may respond differently than adult subjects).

- Then there's Vioxx, Merck's disgraced, canceled drug pulled off the market in 2004 after an increased risk of heart disease surfaced among users. There were thousands of lawsuits (settled for just under $5 billion), which faulted Merck for hiding dangers of the drug. But Gupta told Miles O'Brien on CNN's "American Morning" on October 30, 2003:

"Miles O'Brien: Let's talk about Vioxx. Some indication it might increase the risk of heart attack?

"Gupta: This stat has been around since August of 2001. They talked about the increase of heart attack with Vioxx. The numbers are very small. Perhaps a small percentage increase in the overall risk of heart attacks with Vioxx. They say 37 percent to 39 percent but that's of a very small number. After 90 days, no increased risk."

Bizarre words from Gupta, who later told reporters that he got that information from Merck, the drug's maker.

Counterpunch points out that Gupta benefited from a lucrative "integrated marketing" arrangement, whereby his work with Accent Health (which makes TV programs for doctor waiting offices) received substantial support from Merck -- something Gupta did not disclose in his reports.

- The most infamous report by Dr. Sanjay Gupta was his scathing attack of Sicko, in which he accused the filmmaker of "fudging" facts. However, a detailed review by Moore's team pokes massive trauma-sized holes in the doctor's attacks. For example, Gupta said Moore falsely claimed the U.S. spends $7,000 per person on healthcare -- when the Bush administration's own report from 2006 bore this out (Gupta based his charge on an outdated report, but did not disclose this to viewers). In contrast, Cuba spent $251 per person (not $25, as Gupta first claimed, then retracted), despite being ranked only two slots lower in overall coverage by the World Health Organization (something the movie points out, but which Gupta bizarrely implied Moore was trying to hide).

Gupta said Moore falsely claimed Cubans live longer than Americans, while the most current data available at that time demonstrated Sicko's accuracy. The 2006 United Nations Human Development Report put U.S. life expectancy at 77.5 years, while Cuba's was listed as 77.6 years by the United Nations Development Program in that year.

Gupta also featured Moore critic Paul Keckley, whom he identified as affiliated only with Vanderbilt University, when in actuality Keckely has deep ties to the insurance industry and private sector. The list of other factual problems with Gupta's attack goes on and on. One would hope the Surgeon General would be more accurate on such an important issue. (To many viewers, the worst part of this wasn't so much the quibbling over facts, but Gupta's hostile, dismissive attitude, and his resorting to childish defense of the American system, which many Americans are very unhappy with -- especially the 45 million or so with no insurance whatsoever.)

TWO UNIONS BATTLE OVER HEALTHCARE ISSUE

Corporate Crime Reporter - The SEIU and the California Nurses Association are back at it again. The two labor unions have been feuding - most recently last year over union organizing of health care and hospital workers in Ohio. But the biggest feud is yet to come - over a single payer, Canadian style, public health insurance system. The nurses are in favor.
But the SEIU says - not now.

"The next step in this process is not going to be a single payer national health care bill," SEIU President Andy Stern said in a conference call with reporters today. "The outline that Barack Obama and Max Baucus have begun to flush out is where there is common ground. We're obviously part of many different coalitions, with the Business Roundtable, with AARP, and the National Federation of Independent Business. We can see a path forward. But the next step is not going to be for single payer. The next step is going to be building on the system we have, maintaining the employer based system, filling in the gaps of coverage, and beginning to focus on what America really needs to do besides coverage - which is prevention, technology, effective medicine - and in the long run - cutting the cost of health care, because this budget cannot sustain the continued increase in health care costs at the rates they have been."

Stern favors the Obama/Biden health care plan, which would create a public system to compete with the private insurance companies.

But CNA argues that if you keep the private insurance companies in the game, they will cherry pick the younger healthier customers, leaving the sicker, older population in the public system - making it unsustainable.

Stern says that doesn't have to be.

"The idea of a public system is a question of design," Stern said. "The design here is not to allow the insurance companies to cherry pick the best patients and leave the unhealthy ones in the public system. We are not talking about a catastrophic system for people who can't otherwise get covered. I think we're talking about an absolutely competitive system under the same rules and regulations to see if a public plan can be successful."

It can't be, says CNA's Chuck Idelson.

"Australia tried something similar and it didn't work. Any reform which leaves the insurance companies in charge of our health care system will not work," Idelson said. "How is the public system going to be able to financially compete with these multi-billion dollar corporations? Private companies will advertise and offer cheaper plans. They will be bare bones plans which offer minimal services with very high deductibles and other high out-of-pocket costs. Who will that appeal to? Younger, healthier patients. If you are older or sicker, you won't be able to use those plans because of the higher deductibles and limited coverage. As a result, the public system will be bankrupted and the private insurance companies will be making tons of money."

"There is no regulation which will effectively prevent the private insurance companies from cherry picking," Idelson said. "No one is proposing regulating what they can charge. None of the proposals other than single payer reigns in price gouging and profiteering by the insurance industry.". . .
If in fact the Obama plan will bankrupt the public system, they why is Andy Stern supporting it? "SEIU leadership has been very opportunistic and self promoting in its campaign on health care reform," Idelson said. "They have repeatedly formed alliances with companies like Wal-Mart - whose principle agenda is not repairing our health care system. The motives of SEIU in this campaign are at best questionable."

THE CAPTIVE CAPITAL

The Democrats will soon be making a big fuss about giving DC a token vote in the House - or, as the late civil rights activist Julius Hobson put it, "sending a eunuch to an orgy. As a sign of how the effort to end the capital's colonial status has deteriorated, however, you probably won't hear much about DC statehood, the logical solution. And you certainly won't be told that in the early 1990s both the NY Times and the Washington Post, which then had more guts, supported DC statehood.

Washington Post editorial, Jan 13, 1993 - It is time to right a great historic wrong. Since 1800, the residents of Washington, D.C., have been the only tax paying U.S. citizens denied representation in Congress. With the election of Bill Clinton, it has become politically possible to give them the status that is their due. We believe now is the time to begin defining an then putting in place an arrangement that puts District residents on an equal footing with all Americans.

It has long been our preference to have this city remain the seat of the national government with increased municipal powers, which, taken as whole, would give residents the same democratic rights enjoyed by other citizens. The goals have included full voting representation in the House and the Senate, complete independence from Congress on budget and legislative matters, control over the local court system including the appointment of judges, an automatic and predictable federal payment formula and the ability to negotiate reciprocal income tax arrangements with neighboring jurisdictions. Achieving each, as a strategy was far more important than what the final package ended up being called. As a step toward that end, Congress passed a proposed constitutional amendment 15 years ago that would have given the city full congressional representation. Only 16 of the required 38 states ratified the proposal, mostly for partisan reasons. Republican lawmakers wanted no more democrats in Congress (and, as some suspect, many legislators wanted no more blacks there as well). The only achievable alternative, if citizens here are to enjoy the full political participation that is there due, is statehood. . .

Denying District residents the right to send people to Congress who can vote on taxes or decide questions of war and peace while at the same time expecting them to shoulder the burdens of citizenship--including the obligation to pay taxes and to fight and die for their country--is wrong. Forcing local officials to perform their duties under today's restrictive conditions is no better. . .

Congress at its whim passes laws regulating purely local matters, including the spending of local tax money. Even the city's own elected delegate to the House of Representatives can't vote on final passage of any legislation, including District-only matters. . .

Statehood opponents argue that the voteless status of the District descends directly form the intent of the Framers of the Constitution-from Washington, Madison and their peers. True, the constitution calls for a federal district (and the statehood proposal allows for one, leaving the `federal seat of government' to consist of the mall, monuments and principal U.S. government buildings). At the same time the government of the United States moved here in 1800, the largest city, New York, had a population of little more than 60,000. What would Washington and Madison say about a voteless city 10 times larger than that? We know what they said in 1776 in behalf of a colonist population only four times larger that today's Washington, D.C. They wanted to be among those who governed themselves. So do the citizens of Washington today. . .

New York Times, November 25, 1991 - The effort to grant statehood to Washington, D.C., could well become a campaign issue in 1992. A bill that would admit the District to the Union as New Columbia, the 51st state, was introduced in the Senate. And hearings on the House version of the bill saw a welcome burst of enthusiasm. Three Democratic Presidential candidates testified in favor of statehood and others sent messages of support.

That's as it should be. The District's treatment is a scandal, albeit one with a long history. The Federal Government runs the city like a plantation, denying it a voting representative in Congress, forbidding it even rudimentary self-rule and limiting severely its ability to raise revenue.

President Bush favors keeping the District on its knees. But Gov. Bill Clinton of Arkansas, Gov. Douglas Wilder of Virginia and Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa testified before Congress that the District deserved to become a full partner in the Union. The three were on the mark.

Washingtonians have long been denied rights that the rest of us take for granted. They weren't allowed to vote in Presidential elections until 1964. And it was not until the Home Rule Act of 1973 that they could elect a mayor and city council; both had previously been appointed.

The Home Rule Act left the Federal Government's dictatorial powers intact. Congress can overturn any law the District council passes. A powerful senator can throw some cash to friends by attaching amendments to the city's budget bill. And one meddlesome Congressman can by himself trigger bearings on any law by simply raising an objection to it.

The Federal Government is not above extortion. Mr. Bush recently vetoed the city budget, forcing the District to ban the use of locally raised tax revenues to furnish abortions for impoverished women. And Congress used similar blackmail to force repeal of a law that made gun dealers and manufacturers liable for injuries from assault weapons. The citizens have reinstated the measure; gun-lobbying senators may yet thwart it. The District's non-voting representative, Eleanor Holmes Norton, spends much of her time fending off odious infringements like these.

Fiscal restrictions abound. The Federal Government's real estate is exempt from taxation; the city is forbidden to tax the earnings of commuters, most of whom are Federal employees. District officials say these restrictions cause the city to forgo $1.9 billion in revenues per year. Last year the Federal Government paid a paltry $430 million in return. Denied sources of revenue, the city levies some of the highest taxes in the nation.

Those who oppose statehood typically offer weak constitutional arguments against it. It seems fairly clear, however, that Republicans who oppose statehood do so because the District would send two more Democrats to the Senate.

But most Americans understand democracy well. The issue of statehood for the District raises an obvious question: How can we justify championing democracy abroad while inflicting second-class citizenship in the nation's capital? The answer is obvious, too: We can't.

BREVITAS

CRASH TALK

Dean Baker, Prospect - The NYT is doing some serious fear-mongering when it tells readers that Social Security is a program that along with Medicare "threaten to grow so large as to be unsustainable in the long run." Because are children and grand-children are projected to live longer lives than us, the costs of Social Security are projected to outrun its revenue in 40 years, but the projected shortfalls are relatively modest. They can be easily addressed by sorts of changes to the program (tax increases and or spending cuts) that we had in the decades of the 50s, 60s, 70s, and 80s. There is no realistic sense in which Social Security can be termed unsustainable unless we take the view that unlike in prior decades, the program can never be changed.

Click On Detroit - A Detroit elementary school is asking for donations of toilet paper and light bulbs to keep their school functioning. The principal of the Academy of Americas sent a letter to staff, parents and partners asking for donations of items "that are of the utmost importance for proper school functioning and most importantly for student health and safety." In the letter, Principal Naomi Khalil cited budget constraints within the district as the reason why the school could no longer stock the items. . . The letter asks for toilet paper, paper towel rolls, trash bags and 60, 100 or 150-watt light bulbs. . . Parents said a letter went out asking for supplies at the start of the school year. "They sent out a letter for pencils, pens, they put Kleenex on there," said parent Danny Huddleston.

FREEDOM & JUSTICE

Kevin Johnson, USA Today - Nearly 98% of emergency room physicians report that they believe some patients were victims of suspected excessive force by police, a national survey concludes. Yet most of the suspected incidents went unreported because no laws require physicians to alert authorities. The survey of 315 physicians, contained in the Emergency Medicine Journal's January issue and based on 2002 data, is believed to be the first doctors' account of suspected police brutality, says H. Range Hutson, the lead author and assistant professor of emergency medicine at Harvard.

NY Times editorial - This country puts too many people behind bars for too long. Most elected officials, afraid of being tarred as soft on crime, ignore these problems. Sen. Jim Webb, a Democrat of Virginia, is now courageously stepping into the void, calling for a national commission to re-assess criminal justice policy. . . The United States has the world's highest reported incarceration rate. Although it has less than 5 percent of the world's population, it has almost one-quarter of the world's prisoners. And for the first time in history, more than 1 in 100 American adults are behind bars. Many inmates are serving long sentences for nonviolent crimes, including minor drug offenses. It also is extraordinarily expensive. Billions of dollars now being spent on prisons each year could be used in far more socially productive ways. . .

HEALTH & SCIENCE

Sharon Jayson, USA Today - The newest and most detailed data on teen birth rates shows significant increases in 26 states and represents most regions of the USA. "To see 26 states with statistically significant increases is fairly remarkable," says Paul Sutton, a demographer with the National Center for Health Statistics, which released the data. "We're seeing increases in both the number of teens having births and also the rate at which they are having births. Both of them are going up."

READER COMMENTS

TIME TO STOP BEING AFRAID OF ISRAEL

Keep it simple: bombing civilians in Palestine, Israel, Gaza, New York, Bagdad, Dresden, Panama is the same action everywhere committed by the same people. There are those who find a way to justify mass anonymous slaughter of innocents and those who oppose it. The justifications of religion, revenge, profit and security can never be enough and will never sway those who simply oppose such murder. If for such ideas I am an anti Semite then you have turned that curse into a hollow joke. No one calls me anti-Muslim for saying that the Hamas government is wrong for their random missiles, no one calls me anti-Christian for opposing the invasion of Iraq and I have yet to hear the damnation of anti Confucionist (or even anti Maoist) for my support of Tibet. yet deny Israel the right granted to none and suddenly it is a special prejudice I hold. Whether you defend your murders by calling names or invoking historical injustices or religious fears or even disproportionate self defense, you defend the defenseless. - mulcher

Two arrogant, ultra violent, inhumane, religiously bigoted cultures, murdering each other until one or both are extinct. That's not a problem, sounds more like progress. Keep it up folks, neither side of your hypocritical holy war will be missed by the rest of human race.

We would do extremely well not to forget that in the none-too-distant past, the Arabs were quite ready and willing to make common cause with those same Nazis toward the creation of a "Jew-free" Middle East. I don't advocate supporting the madness of the Israeli policy that is resulting in the daily deaths of children; but neither am I quite fool enough to simply whitewash away the sins of the Muslim world with regard to their Semitic brethren; there is little reason to doubt that the brutality and carnage would have been just as severe had the Arabs been given the upper hand. Neither side are innocent lambs in this conflict, and those with little sense of history or knowledge of the past would do damned well to realize this.

Neither side is in the right in this conflict and never has been, at least not for many years. The international community needs to take a much harder line with both Israel and Palestine, as well as the Muslim nations in general. Cutting off the feed trough to all parties would be a good start, until all agree to get serious about negotiations, and once implemented, the hard line needs to continue until such time as actual, as opposed to paper, progress is being made. Until then, the kind of petty back-and-forth squabbling that goes on here between pro-Palestinians and pro-Israelis is nothing more than a perfect microcosm of the ultimate futility and fatuity of what is happening in the Middle East. The world is becoming sick and tired of the stupid intransigence on both sides, and it is time (well past time really) for the world community to force a halt to this.

We all have blood on our hands since we give Israel more aid than any other country and give them the weapons to kill non-Jews. I am not anti-Semitic but I am really starting to be very uncomfortable with this situation. - Beth

There are, unfortunately, readers and commenters here (and elsewhere) who are going to use the Israel/Palestine hostilities as fodder for their own problems with the Jewish people as a whole. Generally speaking, in reading the comments in the Review, I find this type pretty easy to spot, and I imagine most other readers do too. I don't especially like the degree of editorial tolerance their views seem to be given here, but I guess that's one of the drawbacks of running a site where free expression is given full play.

If the majority of Muslims are actually opposed to what Israel is doing, then why are Muslim nations such as Egypt cooperating and working with Israel to blockade Gaza? Why don't they open the borders and let the Gazans travel in their country? Why? Because they know the truth.

SAVING THE GLOBE VS. GROWING THE ECONOMY

Capitalism flourishes in the environment of population expansion. It languishes in the environment of population contraction. That's why it's pointless to call for progressives to all get together and defeat capitalism. It's like defeating gravity. What it would take to stabilize and reverse the prevailing trend of population growth would entail the cooperation of great masses of people. Ain't gonna happen.

OBAMA AND NUCLEAR POWER

Environmentalists who oppose nuclear power make my head spin. If you look at the 100 billion gallons of coal produced sludge released this week in Tennessee, you start to see how destructive and polluting coal is. This toxic sludge is only the stuff that was maintained in a solid form, it is trivial in its impact when compared to that of the acid rain, vaporized mercury and other heavy metals and carbon dioxide. We release 45,000 tons of mercury from coal fired plants into the atmosphere and then the rest of the biosphere. Those who think that there are other sources of energy that competes with nuclear besides coal has simply not done their homework - Ken

This is a case where the available alternatives range from worse to much worse. No other energy source or combination can provide the level of energy nukes can except by massively and constantly polluting. Pollution is a known killer, and it does its lethal work unceasingly. That's not true of nuke plant operation, those green fear rumors notwithstanding. Nukes are potentially devastating, but not necessarily so.

They also have a limited lifespan because the fuel (uranium ore) is not available in unlimited -or even large- amounts. It can keep us going for about 100 years.

But if Prof. Lovelock is correct (and there's no reason to think he's not), in 100 years we're either going to have solved the climate problem that now makes nukes our best (even only) choice or we are going to be circling the drain as a species and taking all other high-order life forms with us. Presumably we'd rather avoid that latter outcome.

To avoid killing ourselves, it seems to me that our choices are few: stop being a technological species, at least for awhile; immediately find a non-polluting source of power not currently known; or use nukes while we scramble like hell to develop something better.

I suspect Obama is touting nukes for all the wrong reasons, but that doesn't make nukes the wrong interim solution. - Mairead

Of course corporate-owned pols would think nuclear power is a feasible 'alternative' energy source. Nuclear power is powered by a commodity that can be easily corporate owned (just think Standard Uranium instead of Standard Oil), as opposed to true alternative energy sources such as solar and wind, neither of which it would be very easy for the corporados to claim ownership rights in. This would seem to be the most obvious explanation for Obama's push to more nuclear power development, and yet it seems to occur to very few people.

We need to develop all forms of alternative energy (wind, solar and biofuels, however, nuclear power is safe and effective. Almost 80% of all power generated in France comes from atomic energy. Expansion of nuclear power will reduce carbon emissions and create a lot of good-paying jobs. Nuclear energy is not a right vs. left issue. Instead of attacking nuclear power, the left should be calling for building more nuke plants under public ownership.

RAIL TAKES BACK SEAT IN OBAMA STIMULUS PLAN[SS1]

The 3+ trillion bucks the government has thrown at the banks since August would have gone a long way in refitting the country for the post-petroleum age. Instead we've lost 3+ trillion and have nothing to show for it. Oh well.

YOU DON'T NEED GIZMOS TO BUILD GREEN

Save the planet. Kill yourself.

No you don't, but there's a shit load of money to be made in promoting, in a coded fashion, just that idea. Just look at publications such as the disgustingly elitist 'green home' magazine Dwell (which purports to be aimed at ordinary people, but invariably prints articles about trendy Yup families in their 'green' homes who are clearly in the high five-to-six-figure-a-year income bracket, and builders who sneer that their eco-friendly small prefab houses aren't for "people who live in trailer parks", and whose ads and promotional pieces are all for companies who sell supposedly 'earth-friendly' luxury products that are needless consumer goods just the same), and you'll quickly come to realize that much of the whole 'green' idea is little more than a passing fad aimed at the wannabe hip twenty percent of the economy who can afford to indulge their fantasies of being responsible stewards of the earth while continuing on in the binge-spend-consume lifestyle that they have been led to believe they are eminently entitled to pursue. - Right Democrat

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